[Evaluation of fluorine-18-fluorodeoxyglucose whole body positron emission tomography imaging in the clinical diagnosis of lung cancer].

In recent years the use of positron emission tomography (PET) with fluorine-18-fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) has become a valuable tool in the detection of a variety of tumors including lung cancer. To determine its role in the diagnosis of patients with suspected lung cancer, we compared the results of FDG-PET with those of the other scintigraphic imaging techniques (67Ga-planar image, 201Tl-SPECT and 99mTc-bone scintigraphy) used worldwide in patients with lung cancer. The analysis group consists of 178 patients, 159 malignant pulmonary diseases and 19 benign pulmonary diseases. FDG-PET was performed in 65 patients (51 malignant pulmonary diseases, 14 benign pulmonary diseases). FDG-PET had a sensitivity, specificity and accuracy of 98.0%, 78.6% and 93.8%, respectively, in detecting malignant pulmonary nodules. In N staging, sensitivity, specificity and accuracy were 66.7%, 81.3% and 76.0%, respectively. In M staging, the accuracy was 100%. Thus, FDG-PET imaging was more accurate than the other types of scintigraphic imaging. In our observations, whole-body 18FDG-PET images improved diagnostic accuracy in the evaluation of lung lesions and the staging of lung cancer.